


I'm Sorry, Brother

by Iggytheperson



Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Family Issues, Idol Culture Is Trash, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Reconciliation, Trying To Deal With Trauma And Really Not Knowing How The Fuck To Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16604846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iggytheperson/pseuds/Iggytheperson
Summary: There is no car accident, there is no funeral. There's just two brothers and a big, scary world.





	I'm Sorry, Brother

Ken asks his big brother if they can go to the park, and Osamu looks at the weather forecast, sees that it might rain. He says they’ll go another day.

So there is no car crash, no funeral. But Yukio Oikawa still finds Ken anyways, sees his coworker parading his eldest son around like a trophy while the other son sits and watches in hatred and envy. He sees two equally bitter and miserable children. But one isn’t used to being manipulated yet and the other is already sick and tired of it. So the perfect candidate is still Ken.

The spore takes hold, Ken’s IQ skyrockets, and he’s just as competent as his brother was when he was Ken’s age. But Osamu is older and thusly more impressive and worth paying attention to in the end, so Ken begins a helpless fight to scale a wall that gets higher with every step he takes. Ken doesn’t see his big brother anymore, only something he must surpass, an obstacle who’s shadow must be left as quickly as possible, and it’s all the more irritating now that he’s smart, now that he can see better than anyone else that Osamu isn’t perfect and never was.

The tiny solace of playtime disappears forever. For both of them.

Osamu doesn’t see his little brother anymore, just an angry little ball of bitterness and resentment, and part of him knows it’s all his fault. A much larger part of him knows it’s all their parent’s fault. Everything else is their fault too, so naturally his brother’s disappearance must also be their doing. 

He never thinks for a second that it could be Ken’s fault. Of course not. His baby brother was so sweet and precious and not at all like any of the adults who look at him like some kind of pretty china doll or all the kids that only want to talk to him because he’s famous. It was all their parents. Their poison. Their talking over him and ignoring him and only giving Osamu the attention. Osamu doesn’t want that attention, of course he doesn’t, but they give it to him anyways and talk of tv specials and commercials with more strange adults who’ll coo about how cute he is and all of that made Ken’s sweet little brain rot away with jealousy. Because of course he’d be jealous, everyone always says being famous must be amazing.

So Osamu knows it’s not Ken’s fault. The world poisoned him with bitter. Osamu would know, they’ve poisoned him too, he’s well aware.

That’s why. That’s why he can’t be a good brother, why he gets angry and shoves Ken away further when that’s not what he wants at all. But even though he recognizes this, Osamu can’t do a damn thing about it. Every ‘smile for the camera’, every unwanted hand, every empty word of so called love makes anger bubble up and overflow until it bursts and flies out and hits his brother.

But he can’t say he’s sorry, can’t communicate with Ken in a way that doesn’t make him mad, it seems, and so he can’t tell Ken that he was already fine as he was or that he shouldn’t feel like he has to be amazing or that being loved by everyone is pure hell and he should run away now while he still has the chance. His brother is mad, wronged, and won’t take an apology for his pain, leaving Osamu unable to say any of this. And so he can’t save his brother from being dragged into hell with him.

Ken hates it, anyone with two eyes and an ounce of critical thinking skills would see how he squirms uncomfortably at the adult’s far too invasive questions. But everyone in the world is stupid, so nobody else tries to save him. And Osamu tries, but he can’t reach him. Ken’s skin gets thicker every day and it protects him, and Osamu is glad that it’s keeping his brother safe but he just wishes it didn’t kill his capacity to have an amicable conversation with him. He understands, he knows exactly what his baby brother is going through, so why the hell can’t he be of any comfort?

It’s probably his own fault, or something.

And so, against his will, his every effort, Osamu watches as his little brother’s heart is sealed away to where no one can reach it anymore. 

Ken doesn’t mourn this. He doesn’t care. That’s what he tells himself when he slams doors in his brother’s face and tells him he wishes he was dead.

He knows that he’s being unfair. But he doesn’t care.

It’s not fair to ask his brother to fix everything on his own, not fair to expect anything of him after he did nothing wrong to begin with, but Ken doesn’t care. It’s easy to hate Osamu for everything, and there’s nothing they can do to fix their lives, so he might as well. 

The competition can’t be put to an end no matter how little either of them enjoys it. Even though they both know their parent’s affections are stupid and worthless, Ken doesn’t want to live in his brother’s shadow and Osamu can’t stop himself from being smart and accomplished. 

With neither party being raised in a way that would allow them to develop any emotional intelligence or know how to communicate with other people in a healthy way, there’s simply nothing they can do.

So Ken continues to grow up with no sunlight, stunted by his brother’s shadow, looking just like his brother did back at his age. With a performative smile and nothing inside him but rage. He hates the world and everything, as well as another world that’s fake and acts as a much needed form of stress relief. Every day, Osamu watches his baby brother go into the bedroom and then he’s not there when Osamu enters a few minutes later, but he never has the guts to ask his brother where he’s gone to. He has his own worries to deal with, after all. He’s getting older, and every candle added to the cake is a new age restriction he’s not protected by anymore. He watches his brother follow his footsteps right down to the letter, and he wonders, maybe, if he kills all the disgusting people and cuts off all their invasive hands, if maybe Ken won’t have to have that page in his life.

That probably wouldn’t work, would it? Nah, it wouldn’t. All his plans to try and help his brother fail, why would this one be any different?

It’s almost unsurprising when Ken disappears from the bedroom one day and doesn’t come back.

Then Osamu hears their mother say that she doesn’t understand why Ken would do such a thing. And for the first time in Osamu’s life, he knows what to say.

Or really, what to scream.

There are no news reports of the Ichijouji family begging for Ken to come home. Nothing more than a small blurb announcing his missing status. Ken takes it as a personal attack, as he always does, thinking that his parents care so little for his existence that they didn’t want to bother. He doesn’t care to notice that every event on Osamu’s schedule has been cancelled, but if he did, he’d probably laugh at the irony. The way to fixing their dismal situation was for Ken to finally do as he’d always loathed the thought of and disappear entirely. Osamu sits at home with nothing unpleasant to attend to, no objectifying magazine articles or fanmail and realizes, finally, that blowing up the thing that hurt you doesn’t undo all the damage.

He is still boiling over with rage. None of it hurts any less now that it’s over. On another planet, all alone with no one to hurt him, his brother feels the same way, though he refuses to admit it.

He pours himself into the only place on earth where his brother can’t outshine him. He makes a tool, a living destruction machine and thinks of how this is easily his greatest accomplishment. And no one will admire it. He expels the last thought from his head and refuses to think on it ever again. He is superior, he needs no validation from anyone but himself. He is better. He needs nothing. Not a word of affirmation nor a hug from big brother to tell him that it’s ok to cry and it’s ok to be scared and no one is going to hurt you anymore because he’s here now and he’s sorry for not coming to save you sooner-

Nothing like that at all. Nothing. 

He just needs this, this place that’s free of all the stupid worthless things of the real world. He has his army and his armour to protect him. He doesn’t need any things from the real world plaguing him, least of all the chosen’s questions about why he’d leave home or why he’d claim to hate every worthless human being on earth when he chose an appearance so obviously reflective of his brother’s.

But then Wormmon dies and it’s not a game and nothing is ok and this isn’t fun anymore and the shadow of his brother that he’d had wrapped around him deletes itself when he realizes he doesn’t deserve safety or happiness.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting when he falls back through the portal into his shared bedroom. Perhaps a lot of questions from his parents. This doesn’t happen, though, instead Osamu yells and screams and throws a tantrum until they leave him alone and his big brother tucks him into bed without asking why he’d left. It makes him hate himself even more.

All along, Osamu had wanted to help him. He’d been hurting too, but at least he’d been trying to do something instead of letting the divide between them grow thick and impenetrable. 

Ken hates himself, but this doesn’t distract him from hating the world. Mother and Father are kept out of the room and so Ken doesn’t receive an apology for his pain, or for his brother’s. He just sees Osamu, still as jaded and worn down, still flinchy and twitchy from what they let the world do to him. He hates himself and everything he’s done, but if he had the chance he’d still feed every one of those insects to Chimairamon. He might’ve been able to convince himself that he deserved everything to ever happen to him if he was an only child, but he has a brother who didn’t deserve any of that. So his bitterness towards the world remains.

“I know I’ve been a bad brother, and that I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But if it’s ok with you, can we start over and be a happy family from now on?”

Ken wonders how Osamu managed to take the words right out of his mouth.

It’s hard, what follows, it’s not easy at all. They aren’t little anymore, and even if they leave it in the past, there’s still years of built up communication problems that neither of them are equipped to handle. Sorry’s aren’t good enough, and they’re equally at a loss when it comes to any other, more nuanced means of patching things up, so everything goes unsaid and they just try to ignore the tension as best they can. It mostly works. 

As it turns out, since they were both raised with the same kind of terrible, they’re similar in a lot of ways. Ken knew that before, but he’d ignored it because being unable to differ from his brother even in personality had been irritating. Now though, it’s nice. He doesn’t have to fight to try and comprehend what’s going through his brother’s head like he does with most people. His brother is smarter than him, sure, but he has all the same issues. Quick to anger, distrusting, yelly. Though the last part is new, something apparently released by Ken’s disappearance. He’s glad all that rage isn’t buried and stifled anymore. Even if the hissy fits are uncomfortably familiar sometimes.

Ken never hides Wormmon from him. There was no point in trying, really. They live in the same room. And besides, sharing secrets is supposed to be a part of trusting someone, right? So it was better not to try and hide it at all. He’d worried at first that perhaps Osamu would scare Wormmon, being so much like Ken and even more like how Ken used to be. But as it turns out, it’s totally fine with his partner. The anger doesn’t bother him, it’s directed at things that deserve anger, and more importantly it’s not directed at him. And Osamu doesn’t hit things. Or rather, he began to avoid hitting things after Ken discreetly told him not to do so in front of Wormmon, but his partner needn’t be told that.

Things get better. Not immediately. Not quickly. But they do. Arguments end with smiles instead of further building of walls. Osamu is able to hug his baby brother again without being shoved away, and with each hug he receives back he feels a little less uncomfortable with the feeling of being touched. Months pass and the public stops caring about them, and they feel like they can leave the home without disguises on.

Arachnemon shows up one night to complain to her ex-pawn about how pathetic he is, and Osamu beats her over the head with a chess board.

Osamu gets hit on by a group of girls, and Ken hugs him and comforts him until he can be convinced that none of them are going to start stalking the apartment.

No matter how much things improve, though, Ken can’t bring himself to mix up his newfound camaraderie with his brother and the friendships he forms among the other chosen. He doesn’t speak of his friends when he comes home from the digital world, he doesn’t speak of his brother while he’s still there. Maybe the former is out of respect for Osamu’s own lack of human connections. Maybe the latter is because one time Wormmon mentioned how Osamu looks just like the Kaiser when he’s upset and nobody took that very well. 

This is all forced to change, though, when he holds the christmas party. Not because they necessarily have to involve Osamu in the festivities, but because he can practically feel Osamu’s misery seeping through the walls, along with undue resentment and jealousy he can’t seem to push down, so Ken goes out and gets him, and drags him into the party. 

Osamu laughs exactly like the Kaiser does, and as it turns out, everyone actually thinks that’s really funny.

And as it turns out, Osamu adores all of Ken’s friends. And he’s going to fight the sun for all of them. All. Of. Them.

He’s going to go to Takeru’s basketball games when Yamato can’t make it and he’s going to teach Miyako to maybe be a little different about the way she expresses her affections towards men and he’s going to pick Iori off the ground and swing him around when he wins the kendo tournament.

And he’s going to be sitting there with all of them when Ken wakes up in the hospital at age fourteen from his Alphamon-induced coma, with the room barricaded shut because the nurses tried to tell him he wasn’t allowed in yet, and with Jun on the way over with a ladder to get in through the window. And he’s going to take them out on a road trip so none of them have to go to school while they’re still depressed about being left to die by their friends.

And it’s going to be ok. It’s not going to be perfect. Because Osamu isn’t perfect, never was and never claimed to be. But it’s going to be as ok as it can be. And that’s just fine.


End file.
